Any views on gmo's? some gmo info....

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On January 17, internationally recognized plant pathologist Dr. Don Huber, wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack warning of the discovery of a new pathogen and a possible link between Roundup Ready® (GMO) corn and soybeans and severe reproductive problems in livestock as well as widespread crop failure.

Less than 3 weeks later, the Obama administration approved 2 new Roundup Ready® GMO crops, set to be planted this spring...


http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign ... s_warning/


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/1 ... 20365.html


Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals

Huffington Post Katherine Goldstein/Gazelle Emami First Posted: 01/12/10 05:30 PM Updated: 03/18/10 05:12 AM


In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

Moved from General Autism to Science.

Yes, it is rather worrying...

I'm in favor of GMO crops. Careful oversight is needed, but unless you are willing to condemn billions of people to starvation and death there is no alternative.

since when did gmo crop improve output? they do for the first few years, but after that outputs fall behind conventional. also, organic farming, if done right, can actually raise output after a number of years.

one of the main reasons for this is the fact that all of these toxins that GMO's either emit, or, especially those that are sprayed on them like glyphosate, tend to destroy the nutritive value of the soil.

also, if gmo plants are killing animals and making them infertile as Dr. Huber said, then how exactly are they contributing to helping feed people? they're actually destroying some of the most calorie and nutrient dense sources of food production.

then there's the organ toxicity they produce.... i guess damaging people's livers and kidneys helps them survive somehow?

then there's also the problem, which Huber noted, that once this stuff has been released into the environment it cannot be taken back out. given that he and his scientists have already shown that it may very well lead to the collapse of out food supply, how again are these GMO's helping feed people?


then, on top of that there's the issue of these companies wanting to use GMO technology to cause plants to start producing industrial chemicals (look it up). what happens when these chemical production genes start transferring to other plants causing them to create the very same chemicals? it will be industrial pollution on a scale never seen before, and also one that cannot be simply removed from our ecosystem.

There seems to have been a huge amount of naivety by the producers of GMO products. I read somewhere about crop trials of GM maize and they kept something like a 100m gap between GM maize and neighbouring normal maize so there would be no cross pollination. That struck me as incredibly dumb. Pollen is going to carry in the wind much further than that. Subsequent tests have shown that nearby farmers crops were also contaminated with some GM genes too.

To take the piss on top of that Monsanto took legal action to stop those farmers planting their own grain the following year because it had been found to contain some of their proprietary GM maize genes! Insult on top of injury.

Farmers with GM crops were also being refused permission to plan their own grains and had to buy from Monsanto every year.

in some cases GMO is neccesary, i think it is pappaya production where a disease meant that gene modification was neccesary to continue comercial production,
this concept actually aplies to pretty much any of the far reaching grains as well, soy, wheat, rice and the like.

there might be single isntances where it is dangerous but there is certainly also a lot where it isnt,
it also depend on the degree of modification.

Um... since it started. That has largely been the point of most genetic engineering projects in agriculture.


If that were true, organic crops would be cheaper than conventional or GMO crops.


Except that the opposite is actually true. By genetically engineering crops with pest resistance, you have much less need to use pesticide.

1) actually, the largest point of genetic engineering in agriculture has been to either make plants produce pesticide or make them resistant to herbicide. and more recently to make them produce industrial chemicals. and just because something is the point of some action does not mean it is the effect.

2) no it wouldn't. organic is not subsidized. and if it were it may actually be cheaper. also, many times organic isn't all that much more expensive. sometimes it's even cheaper. i used to be able to get organic cashews for less than what i would pay for walmart brand cashews. they recently just about doubled the prices on them for some reason.

3) the engineered "pest resistance" as you call it is usually (actually i think it's exclusively at this point) either the ability of the crop to produce thousands of times more Bt toxin than would be sprayed on it otherwise, such as the case is with Bt corn, or it's in the ability of the plant to handle more herbicide (and maybe pesticide) as is the case with roundup resistant crops. glyphosate in particular destroys the nutritive value of the soil to starve weeds of the nutrients they need to grow. it's getting to the point that now glyphosate resistant GMO crops are becoming susceptible to this... and the problem is being compounded by the fact that these genes are transferring into the very weeds that farmers desire to eradicate without manual labor. this requires even more glyphosate, or other toxic chemical to be sprayed on the crops thereby reducing the quality of the soil even further.

i don't know about that. i know wheat was recently modified using the old hybrid method to be more resistant to some disease.

this is another big problem. they are using these tactics to drive farmers out of business. farmers in India who have bought into this GMO nonsense ended up having a lot of crop failures. because of this and the debt they had to go into to buy the GMO seeds and chemicals they, in 10's (i think it was 100's actually) of thousands of cases end up committing suicide.

yup, 250,000 and counting......


http://www.chrgj.org/publications/docs/every30min.pdf

read the top of page 7 in the pdf file. that's merely one of the problem with these crops. anything grown in a certain area for thousands or even just hundreds of years will have adapted to the climate there. Bt cotton apparently hadn't.


wow, apparently one of the big reasons for growth of Bt cotton over there is that other forms have been banned.

For 99.99% of human history, we have been able to feed ourselves without frankenfoods. I think what you were trying to say is "unless you are willing to condemn dozens of massive corporations to slightly lower profit margins, there is no alternative".

The monoculture created by widespread use of a single strain of crop poses a far greater risk of causing starvation than not using GMOs. One crop disease or resistant pest outbreak either produced naturally (life will find a way) or through an act of terrorism could wipe out 80% of the world's (97% of the US's) corn supply.

actually, if you watch the Huber vid i linked to above you'll note that that's already starting to happen.

also, if we're talking about feeding people then is it not more important to count total nutrient and calorie yield than merely just crop yield? obviously it is. so, how is a class of crops that makes animals infertile and even kills them according to some reports a class of crops that actually helps feed people?

To everyone in this thread: quit conflating the business practices of any given corporation with the value of a particular field of technology. It makes you look foolish and detracts from an actual discussion of the merits of GMO. Monsanto may have done a number of things wrong, but that does not reflect on whether or not GMO as a class of technologies is useful. As I said in my first post, oversight and regulation is needed to prevent abuses by specific companies. Anti-trust action might even be necessary. But GMO, used responsibly, has the potential to be one of the greatest achievements in human history.

One of the primary goals, since the beginning of bioengineering, has been to increase crop yields. They have been successful in doing this.


I highly doubt that subsidization counts for even close to all the differences in cost. And GMO has other advantages beyond merely increasing crop yields; see eg golden rice.


You're referring to Monstanto's "Roundup-Ready" crops, right? Again, this is a failing of a specific company, and probably a place where anti-trust action would make sense. But fewer pesticides need to be used on GMO than on conventional crops, with resultant decreases in the environmental impact of agriculture.


^Here's a guy who knows jack s**t about corn genetics. Or wheat genetics, for that matter. Both crops (even in their purportedly "natural" form as cultivated by primitive humans for thousands of years) are monstrous multiple-hybrid species that could never exist on their own in nature.

Also, for 99.99% of human history, we had a population well under a billion humans. We now are approaching 7 billion. Surely you are not so obtuse as to think that we can simply proceed as ancient humans did in the face of such change?

I will ignore your childish insults as I recognize them as a defense mechanism utilized when you have nothing intelligent to add to the discussion. Yes, corn and wheat and most other plants have evolved over the centuries. This is not the same as genetically modifying the plant. If you cross-pollinate 2 different varieties of corn, you still end up with something that is genetically identifiable as corn. When you use bacteria or viruses to introduce NEW genes into a corn plant , you do not have corn, you have a new species of plant.

As to your second point, genetically modified foods have only been around for about 15 years. There is plenty of arable land that is sitting unused because companies like Monsanto have lobbied the US government to provide subsidies for growing their crops. It would cost an African farmer more money to grow their own corn than it costs to buy GMO corn from an American farmer. There has not been nearly enough testing of these "foods" for them to be considered even remotely safe. They were rushed into use by greedy corporations who put their profit margins above the health and safety of consumers.

If GMOs are safe, why do the food corporations spend so much money fighting against efforts to require that GMO foods be labeled on packaging? Why not allow consumers to be informed as to what we are putting into the bodies of our families?

Actually, the exact opposite is true. Studies have shown that GMO plants require 2-5 times more chemicals to grow than conventional (non-organic, non-GMO) crops.

I'm a biologist. I have some idea what I'm talking about here.


You are mistaken. The cross-species hybridization events that led to modern corn were far greater in scope than what would happen in the normal course of evolution over time in the absence of human intervention. It was not a matter of cross-pollinating two varieties of corn; corn did not exist.


New genes (and indeed, entire new genomes) were added to arrive at what you call "corn." It certainly does not belong to the same species as any of its precursors. The vector that adds new genes is not terribly relevant.


As I said: the actions of a specific company are not relevant in a discussion of the value of technology. You may as well oppose the use of computers on the basis of Microsoft's corrupt business practices.


There has been plenty of testing. No doubt testing will continue, but the results of those tests will be irrelevant in the face of some paranoid hippy's confirmation bias.


To avoid having to deal with misinformed alarmists, presumably. And you are yet again conflating the actions of a company with the potential of a technology. Stop this.